Call Center Career Description

Call Center Career Description

A career in call centers involves font-facing jobs performing either outbound calls or inbound customer calls.  Call centers have evolved to encompass the following areas for various key positions.

• Call center agents for inbound call centers deal with customers placing calls for sales orders, pre-sales inquiries, post sales technical or functional help and complaints.
• Inbound call centers dealing with customer complaints often multi-level escalation agents authorized to resolve complaints that can’t be handled at the first call level.
• Outbound call centers involve agents calling customers for billing and collection purposed, direct selling, customer data verification and phone surveys.
• Call centers often have team captains or supervisors for each shift as well as a call center manager.
• A call center QA monitors calls at random to ensure they are made within standards.
• A call center system accountant provides billing report for all calls made in behalf of the company for billing purposes.

Education

There’s no specific educational background for call center agents as most companies only require a high school diploma and a good verbal communication skill in the prescribed language.  Having a Spanish speaking skill to address the Latin communities can be an asset.  Most of the knowledge a call center agent needs can be learned in the orientation trainings, seminars and on the job, particularly in the use of its computer-based phone systems.

Employment

Call centers are labor-intensive and are now mostly outsourced in third world countries with low labor costs and high English literacy rates. But there are still call centers for technical support in high technology industries where the knowledge can’t easily be transferred. Median salary is around $12 per hour for US-based agents but this has since come down to just $2 or less with outsourcing.